risk taking is so not my forte. Go ahead be stunned all those who visualize all the deep conversations us writers must spawn. Not so much us transient types.

To be honest, I prefer my communication to be of the non-verbal variety. I can be very social but I fly best in quiet solitude. We open skied writer types don’t really live to talk about our feelings. We write them down, scratch them out, edit and polish each word until its just right and blows big sky sunshine. Rare is the talker who speaks a flawless first draft, with shiny upsided vocabulary and perfect pitch delivery. I am not that kind. I speak in flawless shitty first draft and this is a trait I pay for more often than not.

When many writers aren’t writing, we slam book after book in grateful isolation like its cocaine. Many of us drink because of what we write. Or we take drugs. Or hang out in sex clubs. Or at Republican fund raisers. Or both. We do anything and everything we can to soothe the embarrassment and vulnerability of literacy.

In my case I drove and drove and I could never get enough horizon behind me to make up for the territory I couldn’t put to rest. That approach worked quite well for me until my accident and then I was sentenced to operation sit your butt still, and stationary living of the not so rich and not famous enough became my newest self induced reduced sentence.

With the re-instatement of my mobility last May, I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I could breathe again after several years of darkness. I could commute to work, not be reliant or trapped on the whims of others and I could drive my own four-wheeler.

My commute is, or for most folks would be, the stuff of nightmares. For me it is my salvation. Coming in at roughly 120 miles round trip on the goat trail route and over 150 on the mostly divided highway route, I spend quite a bit of time reenacting and reliving white line fever. I’d die without that illness.

To this day, my closest and easiest relationships with fellow mankind remain among drivers. We share this sort of universal understanding about the proper measure of space and boundaries-what spatial requirement a human on the run really needs to create in order to prosper in one’s head. We understand that the measures of motion are both a god send and a curse. Leading always toward enlightenment, finding yourself, and losing your way, these traits are understood while also both unspoken and comforting.

On my commute these days, several of my driver friends have figured out my schedule. It is their voices that commune with mine on that long drive home under the Selkirk Ranged stars. I am barely logged off the job when my cell phone begins to assault the stillness of night. If I don’t answer, they keep calling, until I do.

They know all about the coverage hole between Spirit Lake and Blanchard, how long it should take me to get through that land of no talk back. They will call on the other side to make sure an Elk or Moose or Buck or stray Bull wasn’t in my future. They drop into their holes and like most conversations in life, ours are always in a state of unfinished